


Once In a Lifetime

by beaubete



Series: You May Ask Yourself [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 14:29:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: As far as lives go, this is two.





	Once In a Lifetime

Cold, crystalline, arctic.  There’s something in her middle that doesn’t bend, doesn’t melt, doesn’t break.  It isn’t that she isn’t capable of softness, but there’s a stasis in her, any gentle, welcoming curves hammered out, embracing but still precise, exacting.  He’d think her elemental silver, precious, but that’s only the first blush—steel. She’s steel, hard enough to send bullets ricocheting away with barely a scratch to show the strike.  Her mouth is hot, molten, enough to dissolve the marrow of his bones but her inner core is diffident, separate. He prefers it this way, if he’s honest.

She isn’t untouchable.  He palms her breast, cups his hand around the mound of her sex and lets his fingers dip and toy; she returns the favor and pushes him into the cool sheets of her bed to give and take, the seashell curve of her abalone back pink and mother of pearl white beneath his palms as she rises and falls above him.  She has the neck of her namesake, graceful and arched when she tips, leans back and back and back until the ends of her hair brush against his nipples and his control snaps. Her nipples are sharply raised, and she keens as he takes her hips in his hands, surging beneath her. After, she’ll tidy them carefully with a thoughtful flannel placed to the side of the bed, but here and now her quim is a crucible, her body a forge, and Bond melts at such low temperatures that it’s nothing for her to reduce him to a puddle.

She is panacea, refreshing wintergreen between his teeth, and if at first he tells himself she is his holiday, time away from the bloody expectations of the crown, he finds himself making excuses to stay with her, to extend his holiday, to drift deeper into the mountain passes until he realises: he does not want to go home.  There is no temptation in his breadcrumb trail and so he follows her into the dark, Bavarian woods and leaves it to the crows and daws. When it has been six months, when it has been a year, when it has been five years, he feels the knots tied between her shoulders loosen. He is not leaving.

He doesn’t knit a blanket of it, just quietly stays.  Adds his name to her lease. Buys a car, buys a cat. Plans for holidays together in six months, in a year, in five years.  He finds her standing, his library card in her hand, and her smile is brilliant diamond chips. They make plans, and actions speak louder than words before an altar.

She watches him watch the families at the beach beneath the wide brim of her hat, and when he catches her watching, he hums.  Her shrug is Gallic, opaque. They never say the words, but he feels them; with childhoods and families like theirs, the thought of more is hot, visceral, anathema to this little hollow they’ve carved out for themselves.  Someday he’ll ask and she’ll decline—he knows she will decline, just as surely as he knows he will someday ask, though when and if he will want to are still only the faintest taste on his tongue—and perhaps someday he’ll be forced to decide whether that’s important to him, but for now, they are both happy to ignore the possibility.

Instead he takes her out, her hair quicksilver in the candlelight, her wine dark blood.  She smiles, teeth flash, exchanges quips in French with the waiter. Lobster, tender and buttered and incongruous with the lush restaurant around them, and gin, the bite of juniper sharp-sweet-sour in his own glass.  Chocolate creme like air and sin; he rubs a smear from the edge of her smile and his thumb comes back lined faintly with her lipstick and chocolate, almost black against the dark plum. Her skin all but glows, an angel or harbinger or ghost.  He walks her out to the car, gallant.

He doesn’t hear.  Nor does she, not until the world’s dipped grey at the edges and he’s clinging to the bonnet with his fingertips.  Feet, running—she’s screamed, just once, sharp and high and ringing—and then there are cold fingertips at his brow.  Heat stings in his lungs where a bloody rose has bloomed; he feels it trace slipping warm fingers around the side of his ribs and then down his leg.  Cold chases after it. She’s saying something but he knows. Against his lips, her knuckles are warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, yeah, I know. This is a pretty pretentious one. It's meant to be read in conjunction with [Letting the Days Go By](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121397) and [Once in a Lifetime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121457>Same%20As%20It%20Ever%20Was</a>,%20though%20it's%20able%20to%20stand%20on%20its%20own.%20%20The%20titles%20for%20all%20three%20and%20the%20inspiration%20for%20this%20series%20of%20fics%20come%20from%20The%20Talking%20Heads'%20song%20<a%20href=).


End file.
